In this interview, two speakers discuss the deep mistrust that communities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (Ituri, Beni, Goma) have toward international Ebola response efforts during the 2018‑2019 outbreak. Speaker A describes how locals perceive aid agencies (WHO, UNICEF, WFP, MSF) as profit‑driven outsiders who bring no economic benefit, hire no locals, and use high‑profile vehicles while imposing quarantines, forced burials, and alleged lethal injections. These actions, combined with ongoing armed conflict (M23 rebels, government forces) and a history of neglect, fuel conspiracy narratives that the response is a scheme to make money or kill people. The speaker recounts specific incidents – a pastor’s patient being taken by the Ministry of Health, a nurse refusing to return to duty after witnessing “deadly injections,” and health workers being beaten – that reinforce community fears. Speaker B probes the reasons for the pushback and asks whether hiring locals or using smaller NGOs could improve trust. The discussion concludes that only locally embedded, faith‑based organizations such as Caritas, which have longstanding community relationships, can bridge the trust gap, because international agencies are seen as politicized and unable to operate independently of corrupt government structures.
Chapters
But you don't bring water to people who think, who feel like water is not necessary. You don't bring water to people who you're coming to kill them with water that you're providing. It means that before you bring that water, you explain to people, to make people understand first that the danger exists and the danger is real.
I'm familiar with the kind of pushback you're getting, but Americans who may not understand of this the politics, the psychology leads people to say Ebola is not reported. Why do they say that?
Why? It's just one single thing. One, Ituri has been going through very serious hardship with armed group villages, macheting people, burning houses. You don't see that aid to come. You don't see them coming to support people. All of a sudden Ebola comes in, popping just on dead animal body. And I say, oh, okay, you're coming for something else. If it was to help, it was really to helping us. Then way, way before, you've been there to see all these people who are killing us. But Ebola, the community pulled in almost $1 billion. One, no, it was Ebola actually. It was the last episode of Ebola. The last—
this is 2018, 2019 you're talking.
Yes, 2018, 2019. They could see brand new Land Cruisers circulating, people coming from Goma, from Bukavu, from worldwide, making $10,000 a month, $15,000 a month, $50,000 a month. And they did not hire any locally. Even the people to, to manage the, the Ebola, the Ebola treatment centers. All of them, they coming from outside. And the people just realize, oh, what's happening around here? We are dying. The people are depriving us from dead bodies. They are going to bury them where we are not. They are taking us in quarantine. And is really any financial, any income? What is the gain back out of this disease? Nothing.
Nothing. When you say gain, financial gain or income, from the disease, for whom?
For whom? For the community. They're expecting that they hire vehicles locally. They're expecting that they give people jobs. They're expecting that they rent hospitals. They're expecting that they buy from local pharmacies. There is that introduced in local economy. Just realize that nothing apart from bodies that away from them, They put in quarantine. A pastor is in the church that had an Ebola lady patient. Then the Ministry of Health and WHO, they come, they pick her up. He doesn't know. They injected to her. Then the next day, they refused. Pastor enters the room where she was. She was hospitalized. The same night, that lady died. And then the lady died, and the Ministry of Health people went to collect, to take the husband, the family members of that deceased lady, and they said that all of them, they're going to put them on quarantine. And the pastor was telling the believers, I knew that they were also going to kill the husband and the others. That's advocacy. That's why the husband is still alive. They said they are killing people to make money. There is another nurse who shared an audio. She was on the previous Ebola crisis and being called back to join duty station as last time. But I just refused to go back because I could see them injecting deadly to people. I could see people dying out of having money. I have a video, I have a video of a health worker Who is beaten and dead, dead, dead. They said that they were at the cemetery trying to bury Ebola person and they discovered that the empty dead body there. And those people who were trying to bury, they must be, they must be in complicity with WHO. They hunt them.
And would hiring local people and purchasing supplies locally be enough?
No, no, it's too late. It's too late until the people understand that this disease is real and it's really dangerous and you have all to cooperate. The first thing is the health worker who is there mainly for money, money, because as I told you the previous episode, People really played with money. People were having a lot of— I'm talking of $1,000 nurses, $1,000 doctors and whatever. And if today there are people going on there, even doctors come from outside, they still having that, that episode where Ebola is not deadly disease. Ebola equals dollars. Why you can see people still taking the risk It's not because they are convinced.
Some people who would say you don't have motivation, your community, how would health respond to that?
You want me to be motivated, right? And put life at to die an outside person, even if it's within my community. But if I die, person will never take care of my wife, of my children, and the, or the rebellion, they don't have the to pay us. Take that risk. Even if it's in your community, there is drought, there is, I don't know, floods, and it telling me that your community and you are a medical doctor, continue putting yourself at risk treating people bare hands. Goma is in M23 area. Beni is government, okay? If you are coming, we are in Beni, is MSF, and if you go to Goma where rebels are automatically the government take you as a spy. If you leave, the government, the M23, will say take you as a spy. You cannot go and come because one, one, one of the one conflict will pick you up as a spy and navigate that. This is another element in favor of using those who are embedded within communities. The whole problem is that aid is now politicized. There's no way they will come and give $1 million to a national organization, community-based organization, no. And that all complicates the story. UNICEF, WFP, you're coming in to keep people, get and pull away. You are not there. And then an epidemic comes in, you, you come, you forget about those with whom you've been staying.
So the smaller NGOs, Caritas, are more trusted. They've been there all along.
Those— that is the only— that for me, I would say to who would listen to me, that is the only way. That's the only solution to bring up people to— that disease is there, is dangerous, and they have to cooperate to eradicate it. UNICEF will never— WHO will never make it. I'm sorry to say it, but this is how it works. The international organizations and the UN They take advantage of the government to come and dictate the rules. The root cause is that they take advantage because the government is corruption, neglect, tribalism.
